The compensatory health beliefs scale: psychometric properties of a cross-culturally adapted scale for use in The Netherlands.

This study assesses the psychometric properties of a measuring scale for compensatory health beliefs (CHBs), culturally adapted for use in the Dutch context. CHBs refer to the idea that people can compensate for unhealthy (mostly pleasant) behaviours with healthy behaviours, e.g. 'It is OK to eat a chocolate bar, because I am going to the gym tonight'. We are critical towards such beliefs as they may also be an excuse to justify unhealthy behaviours. Before such effects can be studied, an appropriate tool to measure CHBs must be developed. We adapted a Canadian scale, consisting of four factor... Mehr ...